By Charlotte Fisher,Rachel Smith

Copyright manchestereveningnews

A man from Blackpool who was living on benefits became a Bitcoin millionaire after stumbling on a loophole and exploiting the trading platform. By the time he died in 2021, James Parker had so much money he would roam the streets with his accomplices handing out £5,000 gift cards and buying cars for people they had met in the pub. Back in October 2017, Parker was jobless, in poor health and relying on benefits to survive. He was living in a damp bedsit in Blackpool – one of the UK’s most deprived areas. That all changed when Parker and his co-conspirators discovered a Bitcoin loophole . For three months, they siphoned off more than £20m from his Australian trading account, reports LancsLive . They splashed out on luxury watches, houses, cars and designer goods, including a £600 wine cooler, and banked more than £1m. They had ‘more money than they could possibly spend’, a 2023 trial heard. Never miss a story with the MEN’s daily Catch Up newsletter – get it in your inbox by signing up here Parker’s right-hand man was corrupt financial adviser Stephen Boys who went by the name of ‘Rodney’ after the Only Fools and Horses character. Between October 2017 and January 2018, Boys helped Parker launder the stolen funds. During a trial at Preston Crown Court, Boys told the court how he took £1m cash in a suitcase to buy a villa from Russians he met in the back office of an estate agent and used £60,000 to pay off corrupt officials so he could carry on laundering money. During the investigation police recovered 445 Bitcoin, then worth £22m, along with luxury watches, houses, cars and designer goods, including a £600 wine cooler, along with more than £1m in bank accounts. Boys worked with a UK national based in Dubai to convert the cryptocurrency into cash. It was then laundered through various foreign-based online accounts. Parker died before he could face justice for the fraud but his associates were jailed for their roles in the conspiracy. Stephen Boys, 59, of Winster Court, Clayton-le-Moors, was found guilty of converting and transferring criminal property and jailed for six years. Kelly Caton, 45, of Livingstone Road, Blackpool, was convicted of fraud, converting and acquiring criminal property and jailed for four-and-a-half years. Jordan Robinson, 24, of Poulton Road, Fleetwood, was found guilty of fraud, converting and acquiring criminal property and jailed for four-and-a-half years. James Austin-Beddoes, 28, of Brighton Avenue, Lytham, was found guilty of fraud and acquiring criminal property. He earlier pleaded guilty to converting criminal property and was jailed for 18 months, suspended for a year. Det Sgt David Wainwright, of Lancashire Police ‘s Fraud Unit, said: “The scale of the fraud in this case is absolutely staggering and led to the suspects literally having more money than they could spend. I would like to pay tribute to all the agencies who worked closely together to bring these people to justice.” Join the Manchester Evening News WhatsApp group HERE A Crown Prosecution Service spokesman said: “A very significant amount of the laundered assets have been returned or are in the process of being recovered on the behalf of the Australian cryptocurrency exchange.” During the investigation, the Bitcoin accounts were frozen, however they continued to grow in value. After a Proceeds of Crime Act hearing, the victims were reimbursed, but there was an additional £1m that had accumulated while the assets were on hold. Due to the law which states a victim can not be repaid more than they had lost, £500,000 of the surplus money was given to Lancashire Constabulary to fund crime-fighting initiatives in the county. In a new podcast, Coining It, Parker’s astonishing rags to riches story is brought to life by Lewis Goodall, presenter of the award-winning daily podcast The News Agents. The podcast goes behind the scenes to speak to Parker’s friends, associates and the man who tried to catch him. The full six-part podcast was released on Global Player on Tuesday, September 30, allowing listeners to binge the whole series and hear the complete, true story of money, greed, and loyalty gone wrong.